Christine Grandy

That dark roast really levelled the field.

Devonshire Collections Research Fellow at Chatsworth House Trust Searching for an academic job? Explore this Devonshire Collections Research Fellow opening on jobs.ac.uk! Click to view more details and browse other academic jobs.

#jobfairy this is an intriguing one - 18 month research fellowship for an object-focused historian, museums studies person or similar at Chatsworth House! £48k + £11k travel, outreach etc #skystorians
www.jobs.ac.uk/job/DQK358/d...

Goals.

Did I mention the article was open access?!

Love it.

A sigh?

And we're back! Staff at the BL are great, minimal grumbling amongst academics, very much enjoyed going out of a different door in HUM1 and seeing the back stairs ((FUN!), nobody slipped on the treacherous courtyard, and the rain pretty much stopped. Long live the BL.

Controversial queue rearranging going on but lo, it is to keep us dry!

Also I did not know the BL has an unofficial cat named Daisy. She's lovely and obviously immediately exited with loud noises. Or the en masse petting collective that are academics.

Alarm off and we can go back in (yay!). Security guards asking vainly for an ordered queue. All the Brits rush to the back.

Men with skills have arrived.

Someone researching SO HARD sparks fly.

Is it synergy? I don't know.

There's gotta be a name for this many academics outside in the pouring rain during a fire alarm at the BL.

Nostalgic Patriarchies Hannah Skoda shows that there is a historically persistent connection between abuse of animals and abuse of intimate partners, and through the ages abusers have often expressed nostalgia for the 'good...

'If modern-day abusers of both animals and women seek inspiration in a nostalgic longing [...] they might be reminded that those men to whom they look were themselves looking backwards'.

Hannah Skoda on depictions of domestic abuse through history.

www.historyworkshop.org.uk/gender/nosta...

HHS Is Using AI Tools From Palantir to Target ‘DEI’ and ‘Gender Ideology’ in Grants Since March of 2025, the Department of Health and Human Services has been using tools from Palantir and the startup Credal AI to weed out perceived alignment with “DEI” or “gender ideology.”

Pre-compliance with a regime that is watching you anyway and will punish you no matter what.

"In the private sector, more than 1,000 nonprofit organizations rewrote their mission statements last year to remove any language believed to be adjacent to DEI..."
www.wired.com/story/hhs-is...

A new role at the IHR, supporting the 2027 NACBS conference to be held in Senate House. It looks like a great position. www.jobs.london.ac.uk/Job/JobDetai...

Photograph of an American bison standing beside a fence at the London Zoo in 1906.

The research guide on Environmental History that I wrote for The National Archives, UK is now live! Includes research advice and resources on colonial environments, pollution, agriculture, and animal histories.

Available here: www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/help-with-yo...

#envhist #envhum

New visualization of Joseph Banks network focused on his work to use Indian resources to solve the oak bark crisis in England. jburnford.github.io/JosephBanksK...

Open Letter to the UK Government - Prioritising AI Literacy for All Citizens On 9th June the Prime Minister announced a skills drive on AI focussed technical/functional skills for students and workers, with the announcement centred on industry collaborations, and economic…

Just now on R4 Today @lizforleicester.bsky.social re-announcing the AI Skills programme ( www.gov.uk/government/n... ) that led to a 70 signature open letter back in July on developing a more inclusive, independent and collective approach to AI literacy: connectedbydata.org/blog/2025/07...

Big tech upskilling

After announcing it in the summer, today the UK government launched free training courses to AI upskill workers. It's free because it's funded by big-tech companies such as Amazon, Google, Microsoft and others, and not by local organisations in the UK who have been working with communities->

Thanks to the many who showed up to the first - the second on Thursday 29 January at 5pm in the Examination Schools is about 'Media' - how did people learn a language of social science and how do we know what they learned?

This is the way to go.

#EnvHist Worth Reading: December 2025 Find eco-fascism, maple syrup battles, and moldy insects in the latest list of environmental history worth reading from Jessica DeWitt.

Don't miss my picks for environmental history worth reading from December!!

niche-canada.org/2026/01/13/e...

#envhist #envhum

For a fortifying shot in the arm of sharp historical thinking about neoliberalism, read this (and get your students to read it) from @quinnslobodian.com @tsasson.bsky.social Priya Lal & Gary Gerstle
www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

wikipedia turns 25 today! the last unenshittified major website! backbone of online info! triumph of humanity! powered by urge of unpaid randos to correct each other! somehow mostly reliable! "good thing wikipedia works in practice, because it sure doesn't work in theory" - old wiki adage

Happening tomorrow! Join us for a discussion of The Overseer State with Sascha Auerbach.

Call For Papers: #CFP #Film

‘Stars and Screen’
#Cinema and #Media #History Virtual #Symposium, May 16, 2026

Proposals Due: February 1, 2026
starsandscreen.blogspot.com/2025/10/call...

#CinemaStudies #MediaStudies #FilmStudies #conference #CallForPapers #CinemaHistory #MediaHistory #FilmHistory

Historians since 2016

If anyone remembers that list which said historians were second in line to be replaced by AI, I've had some thoughts about it... and how it relates to some aspects of public history and the current climate facing historians.

www.cambridge.org/core/journal...